Firefox 37 does not enable MSE required for YouTube HTML5 player

[Jan Henke]

After today's update to Firefox 37, the HTML5 video play on YouTube should work with hight resolutions that 720p. On a 14.04 installation it does work, but on my 15.04 installation it does not. This feature is part of the official Mozilla change log, so it must be a packaging bug.

You can verify the status of MSE on this YouTube page: www.youtube.com/html5 . Firefox 37 is supposed to support all, but the last feature (VP9 with MSE). But Firefox on vivid apparently only supports the top row, in sufficient to watch higher resolution video.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 15.04
Package: firefox 37.0+build2-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.19.0-11.11-generic 3.19.3
Uname: Linux 3.19.0-11-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: wl
AddonCompatCheckDisabled: False
ApportVersion: 2.17-0ubuntu1
Architecture: amd64
AudioDevicesInUse:
 USER PID ACCESS COMMAND
 /dev/snd/pcmC1D0p: jan 1466 F...m pulseaudio
 /dev/snd/controlC0: jan 1466 F.... pulseaudio
 /dev/snd/controlC1: jan 1466 F.... pulseaudio
BuildID: 20150328222441
Channel: Unavailable
CurrentDesktop: GNOME
Date: Thu Apr 2 08:38:36 2015
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
Extensions: extensions.sqlite corrupt or missing
ForcedLayersAccel: False
IfupdownConfig:
 # interfaces(5) file used by ifup(8) and ifdown(8)
 auto lo
 iface lo inet loopback
IncompatibleExtensions: Unavailable (corrupt or non-existant compatibility.ini or extensions.sqlite)
InstallationDate: Installed on 2015-01-30 (61 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu-GNOME 14.10 "Utopic Unicorn" - Release amd64 (20141022.1)
IpRoute:
 default via 192.168.1.1 dev eth0 proto static metric 1024
 169.254.0.0/16 dev eth0 scope link metric 1000
 192.168.1.0/24 dev eth0 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.1.29
Locales: extensions.sqlite corrupt or missing
MostRecentCrashID: bp-208cf555-adf2-48d2-adf5-fa49e2150319
Plugins:
 Shockwave Flash - /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer/libflashplayer.so
 Gnome Shell Integration - /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libgnome-shell-browser-plugin.so (gnome-shell)
PrefSources:
 prefs.js
 [Profile]/extensions/{8f8fe09b-0bd3-4470-bc1b-8cad42b8203a}/defaults/preferences/prefs.js
 /usr/share/mozilla/extensions/{ec8030f7-c20a-464f-9b0e-13a3a9e97384}/<email address hidden>/defaults/preferences/001ubuntu-gnome-mods.js
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
Profiles: Profile0 (Default) - LastVersion=37.0/20150328222441 (In use)
RelatedPackageVersions: gnome-shell 3.14.4-0ubuntu1
RunningIncompatibleAddons: False
SourcePackage: firefox
SubmittedCrashIDs: bp-208cf555-adf2-48d2-adf5-fa49e2150319
Themes: extensions.sqlite corrupt or missing
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to vivid on 2015-03-19 (13 days ago)
dmi.bios.date: 03/25/2015
dmi.bios.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.bios.version: A03
dmi.board.name: 0310JH
dmi.board.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.board.version: A00
dmi.chassis.type: 9
dmi.chassis.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnDellInc.:bvrA03:bd03/25/2015:svnDellInc.:pnXPS139343:pvr01:rvnDellInc.:rn0310JH:rvrA00:cvnDellInc.:ct9:cvr:
dmi.product.name: XPS 13 9343
dmi.product.version: 01
dmi.sys.vendor: Dell Inc.

[Ajones-m (ajones-m)]

MSE support is disabled by default in Firefox 37 because it depends on patented codecs from libavcodec-extra-54.

[Jan Henke (jhe)]

As written above on another machine with 14.04 MSE works. I also have the ubuntu-restricted-extras package installed.

I double checked and have the libavcodec-extra-56 package installed. So it should work. If Ubuntu decides to deactivate that feature nevertheless it is a bug and you must at least provide a way to re enable it. The MSE is an important feature of this Firefox release, simply deactivating removes some functionality from Firefox that is used by a lot of people.

[Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson)]

We haven't disabled or modified anything related to this. MSE is preffed off entirely in Firefox on non-Windows platforms because it isn't ready yet (see media.mediasource.enabled)

[Jan Henke (jhe)]

That is strange, since I am very sure it worked on my university machine with Xubuntu 14.04 yesterday out of the box.

Setting the mentioned property to true also works fine here. Do you have some information on what exactly does not work on non Windows yet?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Clivend (clivend)]

On Ubuntu 14.04 64bit with ubuntu-restricted-extras and libavcodec-extra-54 and media.mediasource.enabled=true, I still dont get the MSE & H.264 tick on youtube html5 verification page

[Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson)]

Closing this, unless someone finds an actual bug with our Firefox build. As stated above, MSE is currently only enabled on Windows builds